I enclose Nevzorov’s article, which we have
rejected.[1]
Just have a look at this thing (I heard you were interested
in it), and when you have read it, please send it on at once
to G. V., who is also interested in the Parisians. We think
it is essential to keep a copy, as a document.

We are having No. 6 of Iskra set up—it will probably
be 6 pages, because there is a good deal of material in the
social chronicle and on the labour movement. For the second
number of Zarya we have sent
(1) G. V.’s leading article,
“What Next?”, and
(2) L. I.’s article, “Why We Don’t
Want to Go Backwards”, signed Orthodox. Then Arsenyev
and Velika Dmitrievna are writing articles, and there’s
a paper by Alexei (what did you think of it? Velika D.
was dissatisfied). I have written a little article on Witte’s
minute and the preface to it, and have of course damned
Mr. R.N.S.[2]—Velika Dmitrievna is very much displeased,
and I shall have to send the article to G. V., etc.: this Mr.
R. N. S. is a sore point!

How is your work going, and how is your health? Will
you have a long holiday this year, and where do you intend
to spend it? I should very, very much like you to look in
here and have a talk about various things—but I am afraid
of inviting you lest, instead of relaxing, you put more strain
on your nerves. If this does not frighten you, do come.

They have written to us from Russia that there is
increasing talk of a congress. This once again impels us to think
of a programme. The publication of a draft programme is
extremely necessary, and would be of tremendous
importance.[3] But apart from you and G. V. there is no one to
take it on: it’s a job that requires calm concentration and
careful consideration. Please come to our help, provided your
affairs and your health permit. Or perhaps you will see
G. V. and spend some time with him—you could then take
advantage of such a stay?

Kautsky passed through here (on his way for a holiday
in Tyrol), but we forgot to talk with him about the Erfurter
Programm (which Alexei is now looking through). Has
he promised a special introduction?

What were the books about which you told Alexei’s
sister that they had been sent?

We can’t be too sure about the foreign affairs review
for Zarya: Parvus wants to write only about organisation,
Luxemburg and Danevich will (perhaps) give us something
on France, and nothing else, neither on Germany nor
Austria. That’s bad!

Well, until later. Forgive me for writing so rarely; I
have very little time left in the local hurly-burly.
The
Londoners[4] are here at the moment; I like them. What
do you think of them?

[We shall have to wait a little with reprinting the first
issue of Iskra: the matter of the one thousand copies that
have been preserved, as it turns out, and of the attempt
now being made to transport them will soon be cleared up.]

The note on Adler will still be in time for Iskra
No. 6,[5]
if it arrives not later than in a week.

I write nothing about the draft agreement with the Union:
there is nothing new, and you must know the old situation
from Alexei’s sister.

Notes

[1]A reference to Nevzorov’s (Y. Steklov) article, “Well, Where
Do We Begin?”, directed against Lenin’s “Where To Begin?”
(see present edition, Vol. 5, pp. 13–24) published in Iskra No. 4,
May 1901, as a leading article. For Lenin’s assessment of
Nevzorov’s article see present edition, Vol. 34, p. 75.

[2]Lenin’s article written in June 1901, entitled “The Persecutors
of the Zemstvo and the Hannibals of Liberalism”. It criticises
__PRINTERS_P_625_COMMENT__
40—39
the secret minute of the tsarist Minister Witte, “The Autocracy
and the Zemstvo”, and the preface written by the Liberal, P. B.
Struve (R. N. S.), published abroad illegally. The article was
published in the Zarya’s double issue No. 2–3, December 1901 (see
present edition, Vol. 5, pp. 31–80).

For over a month, members of Iskra’s Editorial Board polemised
over the article in their letters. Lenin accepted some of the
proposals to reword some of his formulations but flatly refused
to modify the sharply accusatory tone and tenor of the article
(see present edition, Vol. 34, pp. 83–84, and p. 91 of this volume).

[3]On Lenin’s initiative, Iskra’s editorial board started to draft
the R.S.D.L.P. Programme in the summer of 1901. The draft
was published in Iskra No. 21, June 1, 1902.